Monsters of Second Generation
by Zamael
Summary: Even imagination can be inherited. And when imagination moves from mother to child, along with it come the creatures.


A/C: Why do all the stories like this focus on Calvin? You write a story about imagination and about growing up, and there's always exactly one person it can tell about. I've never realized this: There's always been, right under your noses, another person with great imagination, and this story focuses on her.

I could've posted this at Halloween, because that's supposed to be the "scary story time", but I decided to wait for a couple of more days: This is because...

---

There was nothing scary about Halloween. It was simply another day, a day most people had picked for creeping each other out, a day when children would walk around in costumes, trick-or-treating, and adults would decorate their homes with bats, skeletons, and jack-o'-lanterns. Children had fun, adults like her would be too grown up to get into stuff like that, but no one, no one, was actually scared. Without all the partying and fun things, it would have been just another normal autumn night, and most certainly, as a matter of fact, _much scarier._

It was the days after that, the darkest days of the year, right before snow comes and covers everything in white, that were really creepy. The woman, who will remain nameless for the purposes of this story, loathed this time of the year. People were afraid of darkness and death by default, because they were unknown for them, and because they could see unspeakable horrors in their midst. This was directly linked to the imagination of a man: Someone with none whatsoever could dance gleefully to his home through the black, while one with much imagination might not be able to step outside the warmth of his home. And this woman, she had very, very much of it.

Back when she was a child, Halloween was the last day of the year, before Christmas, when she could really enjoy herself. Most people did not even think about how calming and soothing it really was, seeing all those children dressed as vampires and zombies, and homes decorated with toy skeletons and pumpkins with faces on them, but with all the fake monsters around her, there was no room for real ones, and that made her happy. But on the very next night, and the nights after that, they would come.

The monsters. The real monsters, not the fake ones. Not the stupid children in their costumes.

Strange green light would glow from her closet. Something under her bed would drool. Old, toothless women wearing black would appear to her window, knocking on it, telling her to open it and come out to play. She could not watch the full moon without seeing something dark fly past it, laughing. Rustling of the winds would bring terrible moaning to her ears. The shadows summoned by the moon and the streetlights would devour her if she got too close. And the graveyards...

Even with Katla at her side, it had been bad enough. Her best friend, he had been with her for her entire life, and she was so thankful of this. He was a great red dragon, the greatest of all monsters, and with him around, no beast would dare to attack her. And he was never afraid, because he had no reason to surrender to fear when all he faced were inferior to him. All he was scared about was losing her, and so he would protect her. He went everywhere with her. He would hold her and comfort her whenever she was afraid.

She had no friends at school, so she would be with Katla whenever possible. During the summer days, he would fly with her, take her to the stars, to see the realms beyond both reality and imagination. The little forest next to her house became a great, endless mass of trees stretching all the way to the sky, full of faeries and other magical creatures. The small beach where her parents often took her, a tiny lake where she could swim, was in fact an endless ocean, and Katla would take her to its depths to meet dolphins and sea people. Once, after one such an adventure, she had awaken from an ambulance, her lungs coughing of salty water, seaweed and small fish - though all her frightened parents saw was a bit of water.

At winter, Katla took her to the highest of mountaintops and back down, he took her to see mammoths and polar bears. He could breathe fire when he wanted, which became an invaluable asset during their adventures in the endless cold. And once, just once, he had taken her to meet the great council of dragons, to their great golden halls, to be the first human ever to see their king. It was the most amazing sight she had ever seen - the dragon king was more than five times Katla's size, and he already was mighty big - and she had always hoped he would have taken her back.

But then they had taken him away. It had been an autumn evening, and on the return of one of their adventures, the setting sun had surprised them. The instant the sun set, the monsters came, hordes of them. Because now she was in their domain, and even Katla could not protect her. And he had stood his ground, and told her to run, as fast as she could, and not look back. And she ran. And ran and ran and did not stop nor look back until she reached home. But even though she waited, even though she was more alone and frightened than ever in her life, Katla did not follow her.

And the real nightmare had begun. The forest, once so full of adventures, had become a dark, twisted place, full of dead trees, bats, and wolves. The ocean that had been so calm before, became an endless storm, rain and lightning, waves the size of mountains. And she would not travel to the winter mountains again, because she would only freeze to death. Her only sanctuary lied within her bedsheets, where she would always fortify herself at night, the last line of defense where the monsters could never reach her.

Then she had grown up, become a teenager. No longer a confused, helpless child, relying on her dragon friend who had been away for all those years. She knew that the monsters would not trouble her anymore.

But they did. They never stopped. And when she was fourteen and still afraid of the dark, still waking up screaming at night, her parents became worried. They tried to help, the best they could: When she had been a child, they had held her and calmed her and soothed her, because such things were normal for children. But now, they had instead taken her to see a certain man, with glasses, a small beard, and an aura of calm around him. She would sit on a soft, warm chair and tell him everything, and he would tell her that none of it existed: That none of it was real, that it was all part of her imagination. She was confused: She had always known it was only her imagination, but how did that make it any less real?

It had taken years of therapy, years of seeing the man twice a week, and slowly, very slowly, she had accepted the idea. The monsters weren't real. And then, for the first time in many years, she was happy again, no longer afraid of the darkness, and what resided there. By the age of twenty she had been brought all the way to normal.

And even that was many years ago. She had her own child now: A child who had clearly inherited her imagination. He was, of course, afraid of monsters in the darkness, but then again, what child wasn't?

It was three nights after Halloween, one such night she had always been afraid of, so many years ago. Calvin was in bed: She was sitting by the fireplace, its warmth and light soothing her, using one of her very few calm hours of the day to get to read a good book. It was one of the favourite books in her childhood, one she had not read for many decades, telling a story about two boys and what comes after death. It had a dragon.

Then the lights went out. The fire died. She looked up: All of sudden, with no explicable reason, she was in the dark and cold. If it had been her husband putting out the lights and the fireplace, there would have been a reason, but right now there were none, and that's what made her afraid. She lifted her feet from the floor, bringing her knees to her chin.

And the darkness spoke. From somewhere under her chair, it spoke. It said, in a high-pitched, guttural voice: _"Clever girl."_

There were no monsters. She knew this. It was all her imagination, they weren't real. She would just close her eyes, take a deep breath, and open them again: The fire and the lights would be back.

_"Clever girl, trying to shut us away,"_ the darkness said, all the while she closed her eyes, _"listening a strange man telling lies. Lies about us not being real. So clever."_ A deep breath later, she opened her eyes again. It was still dark and cold.

"You're not-" she tried, but the voice interrupted: _"Real? Ohh, now do you believe in that yourself, I wonder? Do you still believe in it in the cold darkness, when your imagination is speaking to you? Can you lie to yourself?"_ She could hear her heart beat. She was sweating. All the repressed memories of her childhood were creeping back, all the monsters... _"Oh?"_, the voice said. _"Looks like the lies are losing their grip."_ And now she could see the darkness in front of her moving: It was dancing, like a fire without light or warmth. _"I wonder... I wonder if we could still devour you...? Should we try? We are many. Your protector is gone. You are alone in darkness, afraid, in our domain."_

The darkness flickered for some seconds, like thinking, considering, contemplating its next move, but then it vanished. _"No. You're all grown up now. A reasonable, sensible adult. You still need a bit of work. Your child, however..."_

The lights, and the fire, came back, but she could still see, just barely, a quick shadow exiting from under her chair and out the room. Moments later, a scream from upstairs: "MOOOM!!" And then she was up, ready to comfort her child and be a good parent. Along with the lights, her common sense had returned, and her fear was gone. She had probably just dozed off, that happened to her sometimes. It was just a nightmare, she sometimes saw those, but who didn't? She no longer even remembered what it was all about.

She reached upstairs, picked a door, and opened it. It wasn't until she reached the bed that she realized that it wasn't Calvin's room. It was her own. Why had she come here, when her son was afraid of imaginary monsters?

And then she saw something sitting on the bed. It was a dragon. A large, red, plushie dragon. She had no idea how it had come here, who had brought it here. But when she saw it, she understood everything.

She picked it up, left the room, and switching on the lights of another room as she entered it. Here was her son, Calvin, eight years old, holding on his tiger Hobbes - a real tiger, not a plushie, holding Calvin back. Only at times like these could she see beyond his disguise, what he really was. Both were visibly frightened.

"Mom, there were monsters again, they-", he started, right when she had reached him, but she interrupted before he could really start: "I know, Calvin," she said hurriedly. "Now listen, you and Hobbes, get out of the room, right now. Close the door, and don't ever, ever open it, until I come out. You understand?" They just looked at her in confusion, and she repeated, louder, sternly: "You understand?" A moment of silence and they nodded, jumped from the bed, Hobbes taking a quick look at the dragon she was carrying, and left the room, closing the door after them.

She checked the door, that it was really closed, before turning off the lights.

The shadows moved in front of her. They took a form, a large, scary form, much larger than she was. Many others followed, some big, some small. And even when a gigantic, dark green claw approached her, she did not falter, as the shadow right next to her also took form, so big that it had to duck so that it wouldn't break the ceiling. It growled: The dark room was illuminated in a small flame from the ceiling, showing monsters large and small, ugly and even uglier, and one big, beautiful, red creature.

The flame grew larger, swallowing the other monsters.

---

There were screams heard from outside the door. Many loud noises followed: Thuds, smashing, roaring. Calvin could see a bright light coming from under the door, followed by smoke. Then silence. Some seconds later, the door opened.

There were no lights in the room, and none were needed, as it was largely on fire. His bed was engulfed in happy, dancing flames. The curtains of his window were gone, some ash remaining of what they once were. His closet had become nothing but firewood, and nearly all his toys and comic books were no more. While he might have been angry of this in any other circumstances, now all he could feel was utter awe as he watched his mother standing on the doorway. Her clothes were torn, she was bleeding from many places, but she was smiling at him.

Behind her, there were creatures quite unlike Calvin had ever seen. Most of them were dead, burned, probably once great scary monsters, with more limbs than he could count, reduced to nothing but grilled meat. On top of them sat even larger beast: A great red dragon, almost too large to fit in his room, feeding on the dead monsters, its snout buried deep in their flesh. "Calvin, Hobbes, this is Katla," she told them, gesturing at the dragon behind them. "Katla, meet my son Calvin, and his friend Hobbes." Katla looked up from his meal, straight at Calvin, his nose covered in blood and viscera. "Hello," he said. "Hi," was Hobbes's response.

His mother limped to him, bowing down to his level, stroking his hair, a look of apologising sadness on her face. "Calvin, I'm so, so sorry," she whispered. He was confused: She had just saved him. Burned all his monsters. So why was she sorry? "All those monsters, they... were mine," she continued. "Of my imagination. All the monsters that have been haunting you, were inherited from me. That's why they were so large. I'm sorry."

Then the sadness was lost, and her face became more serious, the like that usually told him he was in trouble. She continued: "Now, there will be more monsters, Calvin. But they're yours, not mine: They will be smaller, weaker, less frightening, because they're not nearly thirty years old. And you have to fight them. You can't be afraid, you can't take cover under your bedsheets. You and Hobbes must come out of the bed, and deal with your fears. Because if you don't, some day they will come back to haunt your children."

She stood up. "You can sleep in our bed tonight. We'll do something to your room tomorrow." Katla the dragon inhaled deeply, and all the flames in Calvin's room vanished, being sucked to his mouth and nostrils, regardless leaving behind quite an amazing destruction. Even by flattening his wings, he could barely get out of the room, but managed. And as Calvin followed his mother to her room, along with Hobbes and Katla, he felt a new kind of pride to her.

"We'll have to make up some story about the room for your dad," she said, and they laughed.


End file.
